After Presidents of three Ivy League universities refused to condemn calls for genocide of Jews at a congressional hearing on Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism” that was being held in Washington, D.C, calls demanding their resignation have become prominent.
At least 70 US lawmakers demanded governing bodies of the three top universities, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, IT and University of Pennsylvania, to remove their presidents after their dissatisfactory response in hearing about antisemitism on campuses. Of the three presidents, University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill has already resigned on Saturday following the scrutiny.
At the hearing Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked a yes or no question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university’s rules or code of conduct regarding bullying or harassment?”
To which President Sally Kornbluth responded saying “if targeted at individuals and not making public statements”. When Kornbluth was ask to reply with a yes or no at that point she said that she hasn’t heard any calls for genocide of jews on MIT campus.
When countered with “But you have chants for intifada?” Kornbluth replied, “I have heard chants which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.” Kornbluth and Gay had given similar replies, saying that it was context dependent.
One of the three, Harvard President Claudine Gay had already apologised for her remarks at the hearing. “I got caught up in what had become, at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures, ” she said to Harvard’s student newspaper. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community,” she added.
On one hand, Hundreds of faculty members signed a petition urging the university to keep Gay as she faces numerous calls to step down.
Universities in the US have become hubs of practices which make their jewish students vulnerable. The three presidents were called in to pitch their response on the issue failing to protect their jewish students from antisemitism owing to Israel’s war in Gaza, where they chose to give diplomatic and vague replies to yes or no questions, prompting severe backlash and demands of their ouster from their positions.
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